Wednesday, May 31, 2006

So global warming has been in the news quite a bit lately, but you still have lots of questions: couldn't the change be a result of natural variation? How can scientists tell the difference between normal warming and human-caused changes? This article provides a snappy summary of the issues:

This week, Al Gore makes his action-hero debut in the movie An Inconvenient Truth. For a moment, let's not call the subject of the film climate change, or even global warming. Let's call it the most extensive science experiment of all time. It's been going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The entire planet serves as the lab. And you and 6.5 billion other people are the citizen-scientists working on it—oh, and the guinea pigs, too.

So hey, take a moment to be amazed that you're part of something big! Now adjust your goggles and focus on the details.